Politico: Why Trump Would Be Crazy to Give Putin What He Wants

Trump won’t be the first president to attempt to find common ground with Moscow. Everycommander-in-chief since the fall of the Berlin Wall has started his tenure with a fresh, positiveapproach to America’s former nemesis. Bill Clinton made a point to woo Boris Yeltsin. Afterthat, George W. Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and was reassured (because he saw a soul there).Most recently there was President Barack Obama’s 2009 “reset”—the first one to claim thename officially. [...]

The “reset” wasn’t a complete failure. Obama achieved some key objectives: the New STARTtreaty; a much-needed alternative transit route for troops and equipment to Afghanistanthrough Russia; a signed agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation; Russia’s abstention in theSecurity Council on the vote to bomb Libya in 2011; and Russia’s accession to the World TradeOrganization. But there were sticking points, too. Russia still refused to share intelligence oncounter terrorism or illicit narcotics trafficking, and even in the run-up to the Sochi Olympicswould not coordinate with U.S. security officials. And then in the aftermath of the ousting of theKremlin-backed Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich, Russia illegally annexed Crimea andstarted a war in the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The reset was off life support; it was dead. [...]

Trump’s gains under this robust reset deal won’t, however, compensate for the giant harm itwould cause. If Putin gets everything he wants—including a free hand in Ukraine—the UnitedStates and the world would be in a far more dangerous situation. From the U.S. perspective,security, trade and political relationships with its closest allies would suffer a massive crisis ofconfidence and erosion of trust, which could lead to misunderstandings and miscalculationsamong them and with Russia—and in the worst case, to military clashes. A large scale war couldalso break out between Russia and its non-NATO neighbors, like Ukraine, whose governmentsand people will resist these new reset terms, adding to existing refugee flows and economicinstability in Europe. In cases like these, damage occurs quickly, but recovery—rebuilding trustand institutions—is difficult and slow work. That’s all for a few gains—increased trade with Russia, a re-negotiated Iran agreement, some cooperation fighting terrorists in Syria, reining in North Korea and China, progress on the INF Treaty and some kind words—which could easilybe undone by Moscow at any time.

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RSA: 2016: The Year in Review

2016: The Year in Review. Conflict, refugee and migration crises, an extraordinary US election race - and result, and post-Brexit-vote tumult for the UK and the EU - 2016 has been a year of exceptional, world-changing events. Our group of expert reviewers – historian and author of The Silk Roads Peter Frankopan; academic and cultural critic Sarah Churchwell and political scientist Matthew Goodwin - reflect on what has been a turbulent year in national and international political, social and cultural events.

Watch Peter Frankopan, Sarah Churchill and Matthew Goodwin in our latest RSA Spotlight - the edits which take you straight to the heart of the event! Loved this snippet? Watch the full talk here: https://youtu.be/5-aWu0y71fE

The Intercept: US Military White Paper Describes Wearing Hijab as “Passive Terrorism”

Many of the articles contained in the document have scholarly merit and are written by academics and researchers in the field of counterterrorism. But a chapter titled “A Strategic Plan to Defeat Radical Islam,” written by Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a self-described former Islamic extremist and fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, contains a number of bizarre prescriptions for how to defeat terrorism, few of which appear to be supported by empirical evidence.

Among Hamid’s claims are that support for militancy is primarily a product of sexual deprivation and that terrorism bears relation to religious dress. His ideas for combating terrorism thus include “addressing the factors underlying [sexual] deprivation” among young men, as well as “weakening the hijab phenomenon.” Hamid further claims that, along with fundamentalist ideology, the “hijab contribute[s] to the idea of passive terrorism” and represents an implicit refusal to “speak against or actively resist terrorism.” [...]

Still, Hamid’s thoughts are apparently influential in government; he says on his website that his opinion has been solicited by a wide range of government agencies, including the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the Special Operations Command, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It is not clear if he has been paid for his appearances at such agencies.

Hamid is currently a writer at the right-wing website Newsmax, where he publishes a running column titled “Inside Islam.” In recent weeks, he has written several articles lavishly praising Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson for their vituperative public statements about Muslim Americans.

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Al Jazeera: Russia: Talking war in times of economic crisis

Eliot Borenstein, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, explained this phenomenon. "In many ways, US and European sanctions were a gift to Putin, since they allowed any decline in the economy to be chalked up to the work of Russia's enemies," he told Al Jazeera in a phone interview. "Moreover, this facilitates the feeling that coping with economic difficulties is a matter of patriotism."

The government's appeal to Russian's patriotic sentiments seems to have been effective in keeping general dissatisfaction among the populace at bay.

Many Russians have braced themselves for a long economic recession. Yet, there are some, like Irina, who are not willing to accept the consequences of the Kremlin's militaristic rhetoric. [...]

Local media commented that the economic crisis, along with a higher alcohol tax, pushed more Russians to use illegally made alcohol and alcohol products. Over the past two years, poverty has reportedly been growing in the Irkutsk region, spreading to more than 21 percent of the population, while the real value of salaries has fallen by more than 10 percent. [...]

"The rise of anti-Russian protests in the Middle East after the capturing of Aleppo, at the backdrop of which ambassador Andrei Karlov was assassinated, shows that while Russia was regaining its influence in the region, it also took away from the US the status of 'main imperialistic enemy'," wrote Vladimir Frolov, a Russian political analyst.

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Al Jazeera: The decline of Afghanistan's Hindu and Sikh communities

Afghanistan's history is full of such anecdotes and lore about a substantial thriving community of Hindus and Sikhs who have called this country their home over the centuries.

"There is a place in Jalalabad where it is believed Guru Nanak visited in the 15th century and is very sacred to the Sikhs in Afghanistan," says Rawail Singh, an Afghan Sikh civil rights activist, adding that Jalalabad, to the east of Kabul, continues to have a substantial Sikh population.

But, sociologists note, the population of Hindu and Sikh minorities has seen a drastic decline over the past several decades.

"If you go through the evidence and data from the 1970s to date, you will be able to see how drastically their population has fallen," says Ehsan Shayegan, an Afghan researcher with Porsesh Research and Studies Organization studying the minority religions of Kabul.

"In the 70s, there were around 700,000 Hindus and Sikhs, and now they are estimated to be less than 7,000," Shayegan says.

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Atlas Obscura: How New Year's Eve Came to Times Square

On New Year’s Eve in 1903, there was no countdown to midnight, no ball drop, and no partygoers wearing silly hats in Times Square. In fact, there was no “Times Square.”

But all that changed the following year, when the newspaper publisher Adolph Ochs moved the headquarters of the New York Times from Park Row to West 42nd Street and celebrated with a bash that launched an iconic New Year tradition.

At the turn of the 20th century, Times Square was called Longacre Square. Stables, harness shops and carriage factories—not glitzy theaters and chain stores—lined the intersection of West 42nd Street, Seventh Avenue and Broadway. [...]

August Belmont, the president of the new subway and a New York Times shareholder, was probably the one who suggested the renaming of Longacre Square. He had to have been aware that the Times’ archrival, the New York Herald, had successfully named the intersection of 34th Street, Sixth Avenue, and Broadway – now Herald Square – after itself. “Belmont wanted to get the most bang for the bucks he was putting into the railroad,” said David W. Dunlap, a longtime reporter at the Times’ Metro section.

Mayor George McClellan made the name change official on August 8, 1904. To commemorate the newspaper’s new address, Ochs planned a spectacular street party for December 31, 1904. At the time, New York’s main New Year’s Eve celebration was a relatively somber affair at Trinity Church downtown, where revelers sang hymns and bells clanged at midnight. The Times’ party, in contrast, would usher in 1905 with fireworks, noisemakers and Fanciulli’s Concert Band at the foot of the Times Tower. 

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FiveThirtyEight: How Many Americans Are Married To Their Cousins?

But the estimate that 0.2 percent of U.S. marriages are between people who are second cousins or closer needs to be treated with plenty of caution. For one thing, 25 states ban marriage between first cousins, and another seven states have restrictions on it (for example, in Arizona first-cousin marriage is allowed only if both people are 65 or older, or if one is unable to reproduce). Those laws might make some individuals reluctant to say they are in a consanguineous relationship and result in some undercounting of relationships.

What’s more, the 0.2 percent estimate is based on studies that were conducted in the United States between 1941 and 1981. To find out whether the share has changed since then, I emailed Alan Bittles, a professor at the Centre for Human Genetics at Edith Cowan University, which, like you, is in Western Australia. Bittles has spent almost 40 years researching consanguinity and has published more than 100 papers on the topic. [...]

Since then, Bittles has attempted to piece together a map on the global prevalence of consanguinity. His 2001 findings are summarized in the map below (you can also view and download the numbers here). They include Australia, where it’s estimated that 0.5 percent of all marriages are consanguineous.

You’ll notice that if you take a global perspective, consanguinity is not rare at all. Of the 70 countries studied, only 18 have consanguineous relationships as less than 1 percent of all marriages. In five countries, more than 50 percent of all marriages are between people who are second cousins or closer, and in Burkina Faso, it’s estimated that two of every three marriages are consanguineous.

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